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Brazil's electoral court pulls a Lula ad as Flávio Bolsonaro's poll lead shrinks to one point
Four days before the runoff, a Quaest poll has the senator at 45% to Lula's 44%, and the president says he will not debate his rival again unless he opens his bank records.
Key points
- A Quaest poll put Flávio Bolsonaro on 45% to Lula's 44%, down from a two-point lead.
- Electoral court judge Marco Aurélio Bellizze ordered Lula's campaign to stop airing an ad about his rival.
- Brazil votes in the presidential runoff on Sunday, 25 October.
Brazil’s presidential race tightened again on Wednesday, four days before the runoff, as a new poll showed Senator Flávio Bolsonaro’s lead over President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva down to a single point and the electoral court ordered one of Lula’s campaign ads off the air.
The Quaest survey for Globo, which interviewed 2,154 voters between 17 and 20 October, gave Bolsonaro 45% and Lula 44%, a gap well inside the two-point margin of error. A week earlier Quaest had the senator ahead by 46% to 44%. Counting only valid votes, the split is 50.6% to 49.4%. Approval of Lula’s government edged up to 46%, with 47% disapproving.
An ad pulled
Marco Aurélio Bellizze, a judge of the Superior Electoral Court (TSE), granted Bolsonaro’s request for a preliminary order against a Lula ad. It opens with staged footage of an actor in a bakery who says he is the baker’s son and makes a crude proposition to women, then cuts to a clip of Bolsonaro saying “I am the president’s son”, ending with the line “With Flávio Bolsonaro, women lose.” Bolsonaro says the clip was a private joke imitating his brother.
The judge found the edit could change the meaning of the original remark and present things that never happened as real. He turned down, for now, Bolsonaro’s request to strip Lula’s campaign of its free television airtime. It is the second Lula ad suspended by the court in a week.
Fight over the last debate
The campaigns are also fighting in court over each other’s eligibility. Bolsonaro’s lawyers have asked the TSE to annul Lula’s candidacy over mass WhatsApp messages promoting government programmes, while Lula’s camp said it would seek the senator’s disqualification and has accused Meta of suppressing the president’s content online.
Lula has now put a condition on the final televised debate, due on Globo on Friday night. At a rally in Bahia on Tuesday he said he would only debate if Bolsonaro authorised the opening of his bank records, adding that he could not debate with a “thief”. His campaign has asked the court for access to Lula’s own bank, tax and phone records for the past eight years, provided Bolsonaro does the same. Bolsonaro had not responded by Wednesday.
Brazilians vote on Sunday, 25 October.